Ilya Kaler - Tchaikovsky (Naxos)

THERE'S no doubting Ilya Kaler's prowess as a violin soloist, and after enjoying his previous disc of Heinrich Ernst's concertos with Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic (a bit of a curiosity but rewarding nonetheless) I thought the popular Tchaikovsky concerto would be sheer pleasure.

THERE'S no doubting Ilya Kaler's prowess as a violin soloist, and after enjoying his previous disc of Heinrich Ernst's concertos with Yablonsky and the Russian Philharmonic (a bit of a curiosity but rewarding nonetheless) I thought the popular Tchaikovsky concerto would be sheer pleasure.

It was good, but I couldn't help feeling that Russian performers, in what is very much their home territory, tend to slot into a default mode of bravura and sentimentality without a lot of depth or even individuality. Kaler's playing is big in tone and grand in style, but the piece comes out as a series of hyped-up episodes instead of a coherent whole.

Melancholy

There is interest in the filler pieces, though: the early Sérénade mélancolique is a typical example of Slav melancholy in one way, but with Tchaikovsky's craftsmanship it makes satisfying listening, too (it was premiered, as was the concerto, by Adolf Brodsky, who became Hallé's own last orchestra leader and later principal of the Royal Manchester College of Music).

The Glazunov orchestration of Souvenir d'un lieu cher (originally for piano) is less appealing: its first section was however written to be the slow movement of the concerto before second thoughts supervened.